Was really fun and addictive as far as VS clones go, I had to stop myself from playing after a while`. The character art was very charming and the particle effects were a treat.
I've got little feedback so here it is: For Zelvy the bomb counter over her head would go behind other sprites instead of staying over the top. Also found some spelling errors in the upgrade screen such as: "Rise your bullts size by 20%", "Rise all elctric damage by 20%" and "Gain the power to cast thunderstrikes at ramdom position"
Got a nice dopamine drip going on my first run as Luna. She felt by far the most fun in my opinion since you have the most options (they also seem like more powerful options than the other characters). Beat the summoner focusing on fire damage and fire-rate. I could just be a brainlet but I dont think it was very clear what falls under spell/physical/weapon damage. Ice boomerang was my favorite weapon, XP increase upgrade was most OP. I also really like the menus and character designs, professional quality shit.
I played as Zelvy. I think some of the enemies spawn at awkward or unexpected rates. Some aesthetic choices aren't really for me, but that's just personal taste I guess. I don't think I've played this type of game before so I don't have much to say on the general aspects. I think it's a fun arena type of game, don't know what exactly to call it but I'm sure you get what I mean. I like how seamless and simple level ups are. I think some sort of tower defense mode could be fun.
Played with the bomb girl and the priestest. Video:
As always very nice to play this game. Good new artwork and the enemy variety and progression feels much better now.
In the info screen, it would be good to have a title for each stat.
This time around the upgrades confused me a bit. I felt a lot of them weren't very clear to me, like the physical/spell damage increase. I can make a guess like thunder -> spell and sword -> physical, but what about the bombs? Which are they? And why bother getting ice damage if my only skill is a very low damage ice aura? Also what is spell cooldown, are those my passive skills or my active one? The bomber active didn't feel much different with that. Neither the priestess aura.
Exp gain upgrade feels incredibly powerful. Not getting it early can make a huge difference.
About the priestess, I didn't fully understand her. Her red aura is very weak and slows you down, without mentioning that it hurts you, something I didn't notice until I died like 3 times to it. I started turning the aura green as soon as I got a good damage dealing effect and getting a better run, felt like a no-brainer exchange.
The spider enemies only spawned very briefly during the run, maybe you can spawn them a bit more, they were fun.
Game felt a bit easier than usual. I picked the wrong power up most of the time (luck), and i still wiped the floor with most of the enemies even at the very end.
Looks like prioritising extra gem and exp gain early on is REALLY powerful.
Hopefully you add more frames of animation of the character walking and shooting, it kind of feels static right now. Some of the enemy bullets were kind of hard to see during more chaotic moments.
Warning: I only played the first character on the first level
About Level Edges: (You probably have this already figured out) Being teleported to the centre of the map is op because its an instant escape tool, perhaps map colliders?
Balancing:
-HP regen + Movement Speed-
Having movement speed + healthregen allowed me to move through anything and not pay the price for it as I just regened the health right up, it bit me in the ass in the last 1 minute because of the whole many enemies spawn thing.
-Fire +1 and the other dmg upgrades-
Giving me the fire +1 projectiles upgrade next to all the other ones seems off. Its the strongest one as its a 100% dmg boost, whereas the crit 5% is poop and the 50% attack speed is better than crit but worse than the spawn +1 projectiles, so what incentive do I have to ever pick crit when its juxtaposed with all the other ones.
I didnt see the reason to pick anything other than the +1 fire proj and attack speed upgrades due to the numbers.
Solution: I have no idea, maybe show that the +1 fire proj is epic whereas the crit is common in terms of rarity and have the upgrades imporve over tiem so that in the first few upgrade selections I dont see epic upgrades etc.
Enemy Spawning:
Enemy spawn patterns are nice but it would probably be easier on you to have them randomized and it would lead to better gameplay. I only played level one so if it is already randomized you can avoid reading what I wrote here.
-
Example, you have sequences where you spawn only slimes, only weird girl which moves at you if youre not looking, small basic enemies, ranged enemies but no other enemy type is being spawned. Whats the decision behind this? Would it not be better to have a variety of them or have these scripted events occur at the same time that you want them to be but the SPAWN-only type to be mixed/different? that way you dont have to script it spawning X-only for Y seconds, but just tell it to spawn RANDOM-only for Y seconds and depending on the decision logic you wrote have it select the RANDOM.
It is fun to see a bunch of the same enemies fill the arena but perhaps this can occur while other enemies are present there.
Benefits, spices up things, the player has to switch up his decision pattern during the level due to there not being only ONE enemy behaviour type on screen.
Drawbacks, will bring a balance headache.
About the spawn type when it spawns a bunch of enemies in a line horizontally or vertically, nice and cool (maybe allow for ranged enemies to be spawned in like that :3)
-
Enemy Attack behavior types:
Classic stuff, no complaints/ideas there but I had some stuff to say about player behaviour.
Related to Player Standing Still:
It would be nice to have something which spawns an indicator at your position which you have to move out of as that would force me the player to not stay still. I could stand still between mins 11-3 except for when the fire totem guys were spawning but after they despawned i could just sit in place again due to my damage output. Instead of nerfing damage output u can add something which "prevents" such player behaviour.
Related to Player moving forwards while plowing through enemies:
Due to the damage output + healing the player can just hold any direction key and face his mouse in that direction and just blaze through enemies and just keep going. ( I did this from minute 5 till minute 1, i just held d or a on repeat). Is a solution needed for this? you decide; my recommendation iis that you create an enemy behaviour which prevents the player from moving in one direction, like a predictive attack which takes in the player's/target's forward to calculate the position of where to land. This will force the player to switch up his movement pattern.
Now, is it worth nerfing the player/upgrades AND/OR adding these extra attack behaviours? I have no idea, but its probably good to have more enemy attack behaviours. (I will have to add them as well to my game :3)
Maps
It gets dull looking at the same map for 15 minutes straight.
Solutions:
Option 1: Change the directional light color over time to simulate day to night or smth, basically a level color variation over time or just as a function of time.
Option 2: A Little intermission during the level, at the for example 7 minute mark, to allow for a level swap. (it just swaps to the level with a different color palette)
Options 3: Moving level parts. This idea sounds a bit out of scope to me.
Meta Progression
Get Gold, Get new heroes, nice and ok, anything you want to do with get X on killing N amount of Y enemy-types, like player has killed 100 small eyeballs, reward him with a character etc (or a steam achievement).
Polish
You probably know what needs polishing so i'm not gonna comment on this, if you want me to do so just reply or smth.
I will say though the chrommatic aberation + bloom annihilates my eyes but thats just me.
Conclusion
Fun game, gets a bit dull at some points due to the player not having anything to force him to switch up his decision pattern but picks up once he encounters a new enemy-type/spawn-pattern.
played as the best girl Zelvy, beat the game and it was fun as always. here's feedback in no particular order
- you're at the point now where you should add sound sliders, because i want to lower the game sounds but keep the music
- i played on the new map and i like it more. i like that touching the edge can teleport you to the middle, i think you should have more stuff like that, some level based things the player can use to their advantage. the sawblades are nice but i can't really tell where they will go, it would be helpful to have a path on the floor i know to avoid
-the game felt harder around the 9-10 min. mark, i needed to play much smarter. maybe i picked a bad build but it felt better for me since i like these games when they are more difficult instead of standing still and clicking to attack.
- i only noticed a few underground worm enemies and shy ghost ladies. most of the enemies were the big green balls and the brown worms with the unicorn horn. not sure if that is level specific
-enemies spawned in lines around you often, trapping you. i liked that a lot, keep it. it was very fun and it felt like i was playing against the dungeon instead of enemies always slowly appearing around it
-summoner spawned near me! nice. it was only the hooded guy, i didn't see the demon lady though. too bad.
have some fanart i posted in the thread this morning, in case you missed it. eager to see your future updates.
Comments
Was really fun and addictive as far as VS clones go, I had to stop myself from playing after a while`.
The character art was very charming and the particle effects were a treat.
I've got little feedback so here it is:
For Zelvy the bomb counter over her head would go behind other sprites instead of staying over the top.
Also found some spelling errors in the upgrade screen such as: "Rise your bullts size by 20%", "Rise all elctric damage by 20%" and "Gain the power to cast thunderstrikes at ramdom position"
Got a nice dopamine drip going on my first run as Luna. She felt by far the most fun in my opinion since you have the most options (they also seem like more powerful options than the other characters). Beat the summoner focusing on fire damage and fire-rate. I could just be a brainlet but I dont think it was very clear what falls under spell/physical/weapon damage. Ice boomerang was my favorite weapon, XP increase upgrade was most OP. I also really like the menus and character designs, professional quality shit.
I played as Zelvy. I think some of the enemies spawn at awkward or unexpected rates. Some aesthetic choices aren't really for me, but that's just personal taste I guess. I don't think I've played this type of game before so I don't have much to say on the general aspects. I think it's a fun arena type of game, don't know what exactly to call it but I'm sure you get what I mean. I like how seamless and simple level ups are. I think some sort of tower defense mode could be fun.
Played with the bomb girl and the priestest. Video:
As always very nice to play this game. Good new artwork and the enemy variety and progression feels much better now.In the info screen, it would be good to have a title for each stat.
This time around the upgrades confused me a bit. I felt a lot of them weren't very clear to me, like the physical/spell damage increase. I can make a guess like thunder -> spell and sword -> physical, but what about the bombs? Which are they? And why bother getting ice damage if my only skill is a very low damage ice aura? Also what is spell cooldown, are those my passive skills or my active one? The bomber active didn't feel much different with that. Neither the priestess aura.
Exp gain upgrade feels incredibly powerful. Not getting it early can make a huge difference.
About the priestess, I didn't fully understand her. Her red aura is very weak and slows you down, without mentioning that it hurts you, something I didn't notice until I died like 3 times to it. I started turning the aura green as soon as I got a good damage dealing effect and getting a better run, felt like a no-brainer exchange.
The spider enemies only spawned very briefly during the run, maybe you can spawn them a bit more, they were fun.
DUNGEON WATCHERS, WOOOOOO
Game felt a bit easier than usual. I picked the wrong power up most of the time (luck), and i still wiped the floor with most of the enemies even at the very end.
Looks like prioritising extra gem and exp gain early on is REALLY powerful.
Hopefully you add more frames of animation of the character walking and shooting, it kind of feels static right now.
Some of the enemy bullets were kind of hard to see during more chaotic moments.
I recorded the later half of the game:
Comments,
Warning: I only played the first character on the first level
About Level Edges: (You probably have this already figured out) Being teleported to the centre of the map is op because its an instant escape tool, perhaps map colliders?
Balancing:
-HP regen + Movement Speed-
Having movement speed + healthregen allowed me to move through anything and not pay the price for it as I just regened the health right up, it bit me in the ass in the last 1 minute because of the whole many enemies spawn thing.
-Fire +1 and the other dmg upgrades-
Giving me the fire +1 projectiles upgrade next to all the other ones seems off. Its the strongest one as its a 100% dmg boost, whereas the crit 5% is poop and the 50% attack speed is better than crit but worse than the spawn +1 projectiles, so what incentive do I have to ever pick crit when its juxtaposed with all the other ones.
I didnt see the reason to pick anything other than the +1 fire proj and attack speed upgrades due to the numbers.
Solution: I have no idea, maybe show that the +1 fire proj is epic whereas the crit is common in terms of rarity and have the upgrades imporve over tiem so that in the first few upgrade selections I dont see epic upgrades etc.
Enemy Spawning:
Enemy spawn patterns are nice but it would probably be easier on you to have them randomized and it would lead to better gameplay. I only played level one so if it is already randomized you can avoid reading what I wrote here.
-
Example, you have sequences where you spawn only slimes, only weird girl which moves at you if youre not looking, small basic enemies, ranged enemies but no other enemy type is being spawned. Whats the decision behind this? Would it not be better to have a variety of them or have these scripted events occur at the same time that you want them to be but the SPAWN-only type to be mixed/different? that way you dont have to script it spawning X-only for Y seconds, but just tell it to spawn RANDOM-only for Y seconds and depending on the decision logic you wrote have it select the RANDOM.
It is fun to see a bunch of the same enemies fill the arena but perhaps this can occur while other enemies are present there.
Benefits, spices up things, the player has to switch up his decision pattern during the level due to there not being only ONE enemy behaviour type on screen.
Drawbacks, will bring a balance headache.
About the spawn type when it spawns a bunch of enemies in a line horizontally or vertically, nice and cool (maybe allow for ranged enemies to be spawned in like that :3)
-
Enemy Attack behavior types:
Classic stuff, no complaints/ideas there but I had some stuff to say about player behaviour.
Related to Player Standing Still:
It would be nice to have something which spawns an indicator at your position which you have to move out of as that would force me the player to not stay still. I could stand still between mins 11-3 except for when the fire totem guys were spawning but after they despawned i could just sit in place again due to my damage output. Instead of nerfing damage output u can add something which "prevents" such player behaviour.
Related to Player moving forwards while plowing through enemies:
Due to the damage output + healing the player can just hold any direction key and face his mouse in that direction and just blaze through enemies and just keep going. ( I did this from minute 5 till minute 1, i just held d or a on repeat). Is a solution needed for this? you decide; my recommendation iis that you create an enemy behaviour which prevents the player from moving in one direction, like a predictive attack which takes in the player's/target's forward to calculate the position of where to land. This will force the player to switch up his movement pattern.
Now, is it worth nerfing the player/upgrades AND/OR adding these extra attack behaviours? I have no idea, but its probably good to have more enemy attack behaviours. (I will have to add them as well to my game :3)
Maps
It gets dull looking at the same map for 15 minutes straight.
Solutions:
Option 1: Change the directional light color over time to simulate day to night or smth, basically a level color variation over time or just as a function of time.
Option 2: A Little intermission during the level, at the for example 7 minute mark, to allow for a level swap. (it just swaps to the level with a different color palette)
Options 3: Moving level parts. This idea sounds a bit out of scope to me.
Meta Progression
Get Gold, Get new heroes, nice and ok, anything you want to do with get X on killing N amount of Y enemy-types, like player has killed 100 small eyeballs, reward him with a character etc (or a steam achievement).
Polish
You probably know what needs polishing so i'm not gonna comment on this, if you want me to do so just reply or smth.
I will say though the chrommatic aberation + bloom annihilates my eyes but thats just me.
Conclusion
Fun game, gets a bit dull at some points due to the player not having anything to force him to switch up his decision pattern but picks up once he encounters a new enemy-type/spawn-pattern.
played as the best girl Zelvy, beat the game and it was fun as always. here's feedback in no particular order
- you're at the point now where you should add sound sliders, because i want to lower the game sounds but keep the music
- i played on the new map and i like it more. i like that touching the edge can teleport you to the middle, i think you should have more stuff like that, some level based things the player can use to their advantage. the sawblades are nice but i can't really tell where they will go, it would be helpful to have a path on the floor i know to avoid
-the game felt harder around the 9-10 min. mark, i needed to play much smarter. maybe i picked a bad build but it felt better for me since i like these games when they are more difficult instead of standing still and clicking to attack.
- i only noticed a few underground worm enemies and shy ghost ladies. most of the enemies were the big green balls and the brown worms with the unicorn horn. not sure if that is level specific
-enemies spawned in lines around you often, trapping you. i liked that a lot, keep it. it was very fun and it felt like i was playing against the dungeon instead of enemies always slowly appearing around it
-summoner spawned near me! nice. it was only the hooded guy, i didn't see the demon lady though. too bad.
have some fanart i posted in the thread this morning, in case you missed it. eager to see your future updates.
Thank you for drawing, I liked it.
And you are right , I will add sound sliders and polish that option menu once and for all.
Version alpha 0.0.8:
New map prototype: you can chose it in the new map menu.
All character have a more info section with descriptions of them and basic stat display.
New weapon: Spiked Balls, they bounce around and deal damage when hitting the ground.
Added a bomb count display to Zelvy, removed the kick, and now the bombs explode in 8 directions.
Luna had a mini rework, now she can use the 3 main elements: fire, ice and electricity, change the spell with the right mouse button.
Game rounds increased to 15 minutes, enemies speed and size can change with the new code I made.
I added Luck, and for now, it does nothing, sorry.
MoonIce now scale with bullet amount.
Bug of Selene that changed her aura while in level up menu has been fixed.
If players goes far from the center of the map, they get teleported back to the center.